Recipes and Stories from the 'Little Italy' Communities Across America

Between the Saints: San Patrizio to San Giuseppe

For the food-focused, the period from Valentine’s Day until Easter is always busy. Depending on the calendar and personal piety, one may live and dine contemplatively for a few weeks, from the end of Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday till the intermezzo of St. Patrick’s Day, when we find that there is always a hitherto untainted foodstuff that someone has decided to dye an unearthly shade of emerald.

Green Shamrock Ravioli at Costco? Fuggeddabbouddit!

But this year, with so many dates crying out for “Almost Italian dot commentary,” March Madness has taken on a new meaning. Clippings and notes on topics that pique our interest have buried us as deeply as the heavy snows currently marooning travelers across North America.

Okay, we admit that we’ve indulged in many distractions, especially those constant tweets to and from our Vatican sources, speculation on what the new Pope cooks.(Rumor has it the Archbishop of Buenos Aires once personally catered a baptism for a parishioner…) We’re listening to Sylvia Poggioli, Phillip Reeves, and assorted BBC correspondents, but we’ll rely on our own insiders,the Diavolo and Sarducci, for tips on any panini to which His Holiness may be partial. We have great hopes for a guy whose first papal Sunday greeting to well-wishing throngs included the exhortation “Buon Pranzo! Have a nice lunch!”

And while we’re confessing that certain temptations led us to stray from our desks, we should also admit that we scored tickets to the opera three times in one week (two live performances and the HD cinecast of the new Met production of Rigoletto, set in Las Vegas, a must-see for Almost Italians.) Furthermore, because the Vernal Equinox and spring cleaning always generate yard sales, we have recently acquired some fabulous vintage kitchen props. But, as usual, we digress…

You’d think that Almost Italians would be feeling left out (or spared?) during the week when shamrock earrings and Celtic-themed ties are the most benign signs of Irishness. Not so!

It’s easy to forget, but worth noting, that a lot of Italian-Americans are Irish, too. One need only glance at the marriage records in cities like Chicago, Boston, and New York… Before the American Civil War, half a million Irish immigrants poured through the gates at New York’s Castle Garden; they and their descendants were well ensconced when the first big waves of Italians began to arrive in the Americas during the latter half of the 19th century. Many of those Italians, single men who were members of work crews, had hoped to earn their return passage back to Italy to find brides from their own villages in the Mezzogiorno. However, a great many found their mates here among fellow Catholics, Irish girls named Molly and Lucy instead of Mariella and Lucrezia.

Frank Bruni’s Parents’ Wedding

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni’s tribute to his mother, an exuberant Irish-American who married a first-generation Pugliese-American, speaks volumes on one homemaker’s adopted identity expressed through food.

“She cooked with a ferocity that belied her gentle appearance, lightly freckled skin…hair that was… strawberry blond—and with an ethnic bent that also contradicted it… she focused on Italian food, and pumped it out in a volume that would have done any Mario Batali restaurant proud. She could make lasagna [sic] for eighty as easily as for eight – and, in fact, preferred the grander gesture. She put together mammoth pasta dishes for PTA meetings, monumental pasta dishes for events at the YMCA. The planning and execution required many hours over many days, but they were redeemed, at the end, by the second helping people took, the moaning they did about being too full, the sauce stains on their shirts: Mom’s version of applause.”

—text and photo excerpted from Born Round by Frank Bruni (2009)

Is there any better time for us to examine the ingredients in the American melting pot than during the season when everyone from mortgage brokers and waiters to car-wash attendants and cardiologists seems to be immersed in the wearin’ o’ the green?

There’s almost nothing specific written about Irish-Italian-American food fusion, but we know it has been happening for at least a century and continues to evolve. So we want to offer an Almost Italian take on the classic Corned Beef & Cabbage.

This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Not only is there some truth to the internet chatter that St.Patrick was really “Italian” (his parents were Romans), but Celtic culture wasn’t confined to Eire, as attested to by the raucous bagpipers of French Brittany, Iberian Galicia and a generous swath of northern Italy. Anyone hailing from Counties Kerry or Cork could be happy with Bollito Misto Piemontese, just one of many Italian one-pot dishes of root vegetables, cabbage, and meat simmered in a broth.

Our twist on Corned Beef & Cabbage is pretty simple, and, yes, in a a week or so, we’ll add our Almost Italian recipe for this Irish-American favorite to this blog. However, we’re playing catch-up. We had barely two days between the departure of the green-beer trucks and our preparations to welcome San Giuseppe, another saint-with-a-story (and recipes).

And because the new pope, Francesco, formally assumed his post in St. Peter’s yesterday, we thought that sharing a more modest dish, typical of cucina casalinga in the Eternal City, would be would be a nice nod to Rome’s home cooking, which exemplifies culinary minimalism. We also think it’s just the sort of thing Francesco might like to whip up for himself.

Since we happen to have a delicious broth remaining from our Italianized corned beef, we’ll use it for our supper tonight. But you won’t have to wait for us to divulge the Italian segretto to both the Irish classic and the Italian recipe below: it’s the battuto.

To understand a battuto in its most elemental state, remember the Holy Trinity: the diced carrot, celery, and onion Northern Italians sauté as the flavorful base of many a sauce, soup, or braise.

A battuto can be vegetarian or not, richer if it includes a little animal fat and a truly tiny amount of meat. With or without meat, the mixture expresses the essence of what the Italians call “the cooking of the poor.” But when Italians say cucina povera, it’s no put-down or accusation of stinginess. Rather, it’s a phrase that conveys more than a touch of admiration for the economy and resourceful brilliance that elevates the humblest dish.

The permissible variations of a battuto are many—lard, goose fat, butter, or olive oil for sautéing, the possible inclusion of diced pancetta, bacon,guanciale, speck, or ham—plus a few of the usual suspects: garlic, parsley, bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, and/or oregano, black pepper, maybe even a pinch of peperoncino, and salt. Gently frying these first, before any liquid is added to your vessel, will give any savory dish a depth unachievable were you to simply drop the same raw or untempered ingredients into a simmering liquid.

March 19th is the Feast of St. Joseph, San Giuseppe. In our recent book, we explored American immigrant celebrations of this festival. While it is no longer confined to Italian communities, the festa is still an extraordinary demonstration of creativity and culinary charity that falls within the doldrums of Lent. However, this year, Easter also falls in March, so this month’s liturgical and kitchen calendars are crammed, almost overwhelming.

With its free-for-all feasting La Festa di San Giuseppe seems like a mini-Mardi Gras. For cooks, it’s also a fix for saintly, if compulsive, bakers so that they can party before the home stretch of Lenten days that loom until Easter.

The recipe below is a combination of pasta with chickpeas, Cicer arietinum, a Mediterranean staple long associated with San Giuseppe and eaten throughout the Italian peninsula centuries before the Christian era. The pasta forms favored by Romans are ditalini, which cook quickly within the broth of the already-cooked beans. Also called paternoster and avemarie, Our Father and Hail Mary, the short semolina tubes are reminiscent of rosary beads. Since cooks often said their evening prayers while preparing supper, some families were known to guage the cooking of their pasta according to the time it took to recite one or more prayers.

Heat a 4 to 6-quart pot over medium-high heat, then add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pot.

Lower the heat to medium-low and add all the ingredients for the batutto. Sauté, stirring occasionally for approximately 10 minutes, or until the ingredients soften and barely begin to caramelize.

Make the soup:

Add the marjoram and a few grinds of black pepper and stir. Cook for a minute or two, allowing the herbs and pepper to begin to permeate the batutto.

Add the drained canned chickpeas (OR the home-cooked chickpeas and their cooking liquid) to the battuto. Add additional water so that you have a total of 6 cups of liquid in the pot. Adjust the heat and cook at a simmer for approximately 10 minutes.

Have your garnishes ready as the pasta will cook very quickly.

Add the ditalini to the broth and simmer, uncovered, for about 2 minutes before you test one of the ditalini.If the pasta has reached the al dente state, the soup is ready. If not, continue cooking and tasting for another 1-2 minutes.

To Serve:

Ladle the soup into shallow bowls. Drizzle a teaspoon of fruity olive oil over each portion and garnish with parsley and freshly grated Parmesan.

What a great story and what a great website. I seem to recall that at one point in the 1990s there was something of a uniquely American “ethnic” group of those descended from two or three generations back who were all half-Irish and half-Italian and who all tended to marry fellow half-Irish-half Italians, meaning they all remained half-Irish-half-Italian. I can’t recall where I read this – it was a newspaper perhaps from Boston or Philadelphia – but the journalist picked up on the fact that they had half-okingly come to refer to themselves as “Iritalians.”

Dear Carl– since learning of your Iritalian designation, we’ve run into several of the hybrids!

Our non-scientific observations have given us these unofficial readings:

Seems that when MOM was the Italian, family dining satisfaction was a given. But when MOM was Irish, and Dad was Italian, it could go either way. The Irish Mom might throw herself into pasta-making and growing cucuzza– or she might just leave the kids to fend and forage for themselves. Anyone interested on reading some REAL research on American immigrant culinary culture should seek out the book HUNGERING FOR AMERICA, by New York University professor, Hasia Diner.